If you ask a social justice jihadi, everyone besides straight white males is oppressed, period. But Leftist groups that don’t fit one of those descriptors are lately engaged in a battle for oppression supremacy, which PhD sociologists with no other marketable skills refer to as “intersectionality.”
For those of us who prefer fact- and evidence-based reasoning, it’s hysterical to watch these Oppression Olympics take place — such as when Black Lives Matter halted the Toronto gay pride parade to air their grievances:
On Sunday, Black Lives Matter activists pulled off the sort of victory that right-wing hooligans could only hope to achieve: They stopped a gay pride parade.
“We are calling you out!” Alexandria Williams, co-founder of the group’s Toronto chapter, shouted through a megaphone as the Black Lives Matter float came to a halt and marchers sat down. Amid rainbow-colored smoke bombs, she accused event organizers of harboring “a historical and current culture of anti-blackness” — a curious claim considering how the festival welcomed Black Lives Matter as “guests of honor.”
Black Lives Matter refused to budge unless pride organizers acquiesced to a list of demands, which included increased funding for black-related pride events, “prioritizing black trans women” in hiring, and “a commitment to more black deaf & hearing ASL interpreters.” Surely, these issues — which are always “demands,” never “requests” — could have been taken up in a constructive manner before the parade. But dialogue has never been the preferred mode of communication for Black Lives Matter, not even, apparently, in uber-polite Canada.
It took only 30 minutes for festival organizers to surrender to this bullying. Gay rights activists are adept at challenging authority. Beginning with the very act of coming out, gay liberation’s whole gestalt is defiance. That’s easy to do when it comes to a government denying you basic equality. When their interlocutors are people claiming to be more oppressed, however, gay progressives are at a loss. Out-radicalized, they’re utterly helpless.
This is part of the self-created problem that Leftists don’t seem to really grasp an answer for at this point: how to unite when you believe in a hierarchy of oppression. Their belief in intersectionality means some supposedly marginalized groups have it worse than others, meaning a group considered higher on the scale will be treated as just another oppressor.
Black Lives Matter has made it abundantly clear that it only views itself as important. The linked article contains other examples of BLM’s petulance regarding gay pride parades — including one group refusing to take part because there would be police there.
At some point, the Left will need to figure this kind of thing out. Are blacks more oppressed than gays? What about women? Would Black Lives Matter stop a women’s march until they complied with their demands?
Luckily, we already know the Left is incapable of figuring this out. So just enjoy the silliness.
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